Thousands protest against Israel

TEHRAN:

Thousands of people rallied in Tehran, Baghdad and Beirut on Friday after weekly prayers to protest Israel's strikes on Iran, chanting slogans against Israel and its main backer, the United States.

Images on Iran's state television showed protesters in Tehran holding up photographs of commanders killed since the start of the war, while others waved the flags of Iran and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.

"This is the Friday of the Iranian nation's solidarity and resistance across the country," the news anchor said.

"I will sacrifice my life for my leader," read a protester's banner, referring to Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

According to state television, protests took place in other cities around the country, including in Tabriz in northwestern Iran and Shiraz in the south.

Last week, Israel launched a blistering attack on Iran, prompting Tehran to retaliate with barrages of missiles aimed at Israel.

Mohammad Javad Haj Ali Akbari, the Imam leading Tehran's prayers, told worshippers that Israel had attacked Iran out of "despair", the official IRNA news agency reported.

He accused Israel of launching a "psychological war" to "pit the people of the country against the government".

"Their plans were precise, but their calculations were laughable," the Imam said.

With warnings of all-out regional war intensifying, fears are growing over an intervention by Iran-backed Iraqi factions, who have threatened Washington's interests in the region if it were to join Israel in its war against Iran.

In Iraq, thousands of supporters of powerful cleric Moqtada Sadr rallied after Friday prayers in Baghdad and other cities, AFP correspondents said.

Sadr, who has previously criticised Tehran-backed Iraqi armed factions, retains a devoted following of millions among Iraq's majority community of Shiite Muslims.

"No to Israel! No to America!" chanted demonstrators gathered in the Sadr City district of Baghdad, the cleric's stronghold in the capital. "It is an unjust war... Israel has no right" to hit Iran, said protester Abu Hussein.

"Israel is not in it for the (Iranian) nuclear (programme). What Israel and the Americans want is to dominate the Middle East," added the 54-year-old taxi driver. In the city of Kufa, protesters set fire to Israeli and American flags.

Iraq is both a significant ally of Iran and a strategic partner of the United States.

In Lebanon, hundreds of Hezbollah supporters took to the streets in the group's stronghold in Beirut's southern suburbs. AFP